Environment news

• How the climate crisis showed up in Americans’ lives this year: ‘The shift has been swift and stark’

  31-12-2025 16:00 via theguardian.com
  Guardian US readers share how global heating and biodiversity loss affected their lives in ways that don’t always make the headlines The past year was another one of record-setting heat and catastrophic storms. But across the US, the climate crisis showed up in smaller, deeply personal ways too.Campfires that once defined summer trips were never lit due to wildfire risks. There were no bites where fish were once abundant, forests turned to meadows after a big burn and childhood memories of
  
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• It’s easy to feel powerless about climate chaos. Here’s what gives me hope | Nina Lakhani

  31-12-2025 15:00 via theguardian.com
  I’ve spent six years writing about environmental justice. The uncomfortable truth is that we’re not all in it together – but people power is reshaping the fightIt’s been another year of climate chaos and inadequate political action. And it’s hard not to feel despondent and powerless.I joined the Guardian full time in 2019, as the paper’s first environmental justice correspondent, and have reported from across the US and the region over the past six years. It&r
  
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• A polycrisis has shattered our world this year. But with care, we can put it back together | Elif Shafak

  31-12-2025 13:00 via theguardian.com
  The challenges and strains have been almost too much to take. But in 2025, words of depth and courage have been an antidote to numbnessI once saw a young glassblower in Istanbul, still new to his craft, shatter a beautiful vase while taking it out of the furnace. The artisan master standing by his side calmly nodded and said something that I still think about. He told him: “You put too much pressure on it, you kept it unbalanced and you forgot that it, too, has a heart.”The year we a
  
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• ‘They didn’t de-extinct anything’: can Colossal’s genetically engineered animals ever be the real thing?

  31-12-2025 12:00 via theguardian.com
  The bioscience startup has attracted billions in investment – and a flurry of criticism, but founder tells the Guardian plans to bring back the woolly mammoth will not be derailedDeath and taxes are supposed to be the things we can depend on in this life. But in 2025, the American entrepreneur Ben Lamm sold much of the world on the idea that death did not, after all, need to be for ever.This was the year the billionaire’s genetics startup, Colossal Biosciences, claimed it had resurre
  
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• Northumberland nature recovery project takes shape with biggest land sale in 30 years

  31-12-2025 08:00 via theguardian.com
  Wildlife trust is raising funds to buy largest piece of land in single ownership to come up for sale in England for a generation“We’ve lost so much,” says Mike Pratt, reflecting on Britain’s nature crisis. “We’re getting to the point where if we’re not careful, children in the future won’t know what a hedgehog is. They won’t have encountered one.”Pratt, the chief executive of Northumberland Wildlife Trust, is speaking on an unseasonably
  
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• Curb the cod, park the prawns: top chefs on how to swap out the ‘big five’ seafood

  31-12-2025 07:00 via theguardian.com
  From moules marinière to scallop, bacon and garlic butter rolls, here’s how to cast your culinary net wider and embrace more sustainable speciesFor a nation surrounded by water, Britain’s seafood tastes are remarkably parochial – we mostly eat cod, haddock, salmon, tuna and prawns. But with a huge range of species out there, making the decision to swap the “big five” for more sustainable options could be a good new year resolution to aim for. Here are five sp
  
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• Country diary: There’s a new tenant in my rickety old greenhouse | Phil Gates

  31-12-2025 06:30 via theguardian.com
  Crook, County Durham: In among the dead leaves and stacks of clay flower pots is a wren, in the relative warm of its winter roostIt takes a hard shove to free the greenhouse door from the grip of overnight frost. It opens suddenly, with a clatter. Inside, it’s quiet enough to hear a mouse’s footfall, which was what I thought might be the source of the rustling, down among the stacked clay flower pots.Then a wren – rotund body, perky cocked tail – appears, hops along the b
  
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• ‘You could see bones’: Families’ anguish over coastal erosion threat to Norfolk graves

  31-12-2025 06:00 via theguardian.com
  Bereaved relatives say delays over risks at village churchyards are causing distress and call for council actionFamilies of people buried in graves vulnerable to coastal erosion say indecision over how to tackle the problem is causing them avoidable anguish about the final resting places of their loved ones.North Norfolk district council (NNDC) has identified three church graveyards in the villages of Happisburgh, Trimingham, and Mundesley as being at risk of being engulfed by the sea in the com
  
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• Ten English fire services tackled record number of grass, forest and crop fires in 2025

  31-12-2025 06:00 via theguardian.com
  Fire chief says summer, the UK’s hottest on record, was ‘one of the most challenging for wildfires that we’ve ever faced’Ten English fire services tackled a record number of grassland, woodland and crop fires during what was the UK’s hottest spring and summer on record, figures show.In total nearly 27,000 wildfires were dealt with by fire services in England during the prolonged dry weather of 2025, according to analysis by PA Media. Continue reading...
  
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• ‘People are wrestling with the burden’: Japan pivots to focus on nuclear power ‘maximisation’ alongside renewables

  31-12-2025 05:00 via theguardian.com
  Post-Fukushima nuclear closures of dozens of reactors forced the country to rely heavily on imported fossil fuels Continue reading...
  
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• UK company sends factory with 1,000C furnace into space

  31-12-2025 01:26 via bbc.com
  A factory in space has been switched on and has reached temperatures of about 1,000C.
  
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